So I finally had headshots done. I had always meant to, when I became an agent, but there was never time. For my New Jersey cards and this column I just use a shot my husband took of me. I went into Photoshop and lightened my teeth, maybe too much.

But now I was in a position where I had to do promo shots, and I freaked out. First, I put it off as long as I possibly could, giving myself a week in the gym to sweat (cleanse the complexion) and sweat some more (raises the metabolism to burn off the dreaded second chin). Then I did my total beauty routine: lighten hair, cut hair, lighten eyebrows, cut eyebrows, throw self-tanner on skin (the better to make lightened hair and eyebrows pop), bleach teeth.

Now I know why men seem to have all this extra time.

Then Joseph the photog (www.digitalartetc.com) came over. He set up his lights, and the deal was a flat rate for 50 shots, so we played around: toothy grins versus slight smiles, glasses vs. contacts.

In the end, we came up with a great usable head shot, and some wonderful backup ones. Joseph had told me if I could imagine what my photos would look like, they would somehow end up that way. As a result, we did a bunch where I was trying for “anchorwoman-y.”

Me: I want to err on the side of too perky, like a cheerleader. Think Katie Couric.

Him: Think corny. You’ve just won the pie contest.

Me: It’s not that I’ve won the pie contest, it’s that my best friend lost.

The result of that back-and-forth, which I think of as “the chipmunky Kirsten Dunst shot,” is attached.

But I was thinking of all this in terms of branding because I was on some chat boards, nice wonderful chat boards that teach me lots of stuff and bring me clients, and somebody assumed … that I was male.

Part of this confusion came because I sign some stuff “ali,” which is a man’s name in some cultures, and part because I don’t use my name as a screen identity.

I use “front_porch” instead — it’s the name of my LLC, and of my Web site. It’s the way I think of my business.

I had a mortgage broker even take me to task for this: use your own name as your screen name because it raises your Google scores. It’s better branding.

And you know, while that may be the road I have to walk down, I don’t like it.

When you turn on the TV, and someone tries to sell you a luxury car, they show you beautiful pictures … of the car. They may show beautiful young people in the car listening to trendy music, or they may show the car in fabulous-looking places, or they may show the car going really fast in way that evokes fun and adventure, but they don’t generally show you pictures of the salesperson.

Even when local car dealers buy ads, they have sense enough to stand in front of a lot full of cars.

Agents and brokers, in contrast, brand … ourselves. The higher up the food chain, the more we shove our pictures into local magazines and on billboards. And then, dig this, we’re surprised when customers complain we’re egotistical.

Well, a place to start would be to build and advertise businesses that aren’t centered on our names and our images.

Don’t get me wrong. I enjoy seeing a flatteringly lit version of myself staring up from the page; I’m just not sure my customers do. Beyond establishing that I’m prosperous (which makes me somehow more reliable) and that I’m cute (which makes me somehow more pleasant to deal with) what good does it do them to connect with the “brand of me”?

As a brand, I realize “Front Porch” isn’t perfect, but it at least allows me to aspire to attributes bigger than myself: hominess, a sense of place, a sense of welcome. Besides, prosperity and cuteness aren’t excluded.

I realize some of the reasons agents promote themselves so relentlessly is a regulation problem — those nice folks at the Department of State don’t really want to encourage a separate business identity. But we’ve got to come up with a way around this. If we’re really concerned about our customers, our branding has got to somehow include our customers.

Because you know what? They don’t much care about who won the pie contest, or even who lost. They just want nice places to live — and non-egotistical help getting there.

Source:

http://www.inman.com/inmannews.aspx?ID=60944